Chinee,

GX=4Runner
LX=Land Cruiser and Sequoia
RX/ES=Camry

I don’t know, but is RAV4 Toyota a Corolla platform?

Again, GS is great. I hope it takes a break and comes back as a world beating sport sedan (Genesis is trying very hard now to fill the gap at a great price point).

And GS=Crown

I didn’t want to get involved in this ridiculous thread. But I can longer stand by and watch this rumor mill swirl without any accountability for what one says.

Guys and Gals of the internet,

I don’t mind you all posting your honest opinion about a particular subject, but could we please be civilized here and post some sources aka receipts!

All of you coming out of the wood work making allegations saying the GS has been confirmed dead by Toyota Motor Corp and not backing your statements with some type of link or photo of a official document is just purely irresponsible and reckless in my opinion.

I’ve even seen some newbies saying I’ve read here on the forum that the GS was discontinued. This forum is essentially the Wild West, just about any bloke with a smart phone can get on here and type what ever nonsense they want and not back it with any proof or receipts other then their opinion and what they say they’ve heard or read.

Unlike many of you, I actually have some claim to working within the bowels of TMS. I’m not going into great detail because I’m not sure about everything that goes on behind closed doors at the company, but I can say Toyota is the most secretive client I’ve ever worked for. They don’t leak information, they do their best to deter third party sources from leaking info from within the company. The point I’m trying to make is if you didn’t hear it from Toyota it ain’t true. If or when Toyota is good and ready they will make the announcement that they are giving up on fighting in the midsize luxury sedan segment they will make it known & clear with some sort of corporate official press release.

Like one poster commented Toyota isn’t losing money on the GS, that platform is so old (e.i. 2006) it was bought and paid for years ago. The low volume LS500, LC500 and japan only Toyota Crown will never pay off the billions that went into development of Toyota’s all new Global Architecture Luxury platform. They are a efficient and very smart company they know how to scale that platform in as many ways as possible in order to make a profit on their investment. Throwing some sexy coupé-esque sheet metal on the Crown with a powered lift-back makes the most sense to me, building a even smaller sedan and coupé variant aka the IS and RC also make sense as well.

If Lexus cared only about profitablilty they would never have made the amazing LFA. Sometimes making cars that sell in smaller numbers makes since solely for the purpose of brand awareness and image.

BMW doesn’t sell a ton of 6 series or what will be called 8 series, but they continue to build them based off their exsisting platforms because it’s good for the brands image. Same with Mercedes and Audi and now Kia.

Yes, the 5th gen LS F Sport is gorgeous and I would love to own one, but at 206 inches long it’s just too big to fit in many Americans garages. My mom just retired 2 months ago and had her mind set on owning a gorgeous 2015 Mercedes S550 Sport pack. Dealer let us take it home and we found it would fit but just barely. She was quite disappointed to say the least, I ended up finding her the perfect downgrade from a S550. We found a 2015 CLS 550 sport loaded to the gills and she is in heaven. At 194 inches long it fits with plenty room to spare. She still got her air ride and the majority of options she liked from S550 in a more athletic wrapper.

Now if Lexus wants to shrink wrap to the LS500 and give it a shorter wheelbase variant or something I’m all in for buying one. I doubt they will make a shorter wheelbase LS, more reason why the GS has to stay around, It’s perfectly sized & they finally will have the twin turbo V6 and V8 powertrain to make it competitive with Germany.

Lexus doesn’t have to invest billions to create the next Generation GS the legwork has already been done. It’s just a matter of throwing the fine details on the cake.

from what I understand, Lexus new GA-L platform which we saw debut with the stunningly gorgeous LC500 is very scalable much likes Mercedes MRA and Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture.

Theoretically this would be the first time the GS was ever built on the LS platform, in the past the GS always shared its internal bits with the Japan only Crown, SC300/400/430 & IS200/250/300/350. Now that Lexus has this new scalable architecture they can theoretically pump out a all new product every 8 months or so much like BMW Audi, Mercedes and Volvo are currently doing. In my own head I feel Lexus is taking their time with pumping out new products. Their engineers aren’t really use to working with a extremely scalable architecture is my belief. The Germans have been playing around with this Mr. Potato Head approach for a nearly a lifecycle generation already and so naturally are more inclined to work a little faster with new product launches every 6 months.

Lexus needs to stop trying to make the GS appeal to everybody. You mentioned market trends, all the rave for luxury car manufacturer who make sedans is creating 4 door coupés . That’s the one car Lexus has missing from its portfolio.

The next GS or what ever they call it shouldn’t be appealing to every Tom, Rick and Harry. It’s needs to be otherworldly, low slung, sexy and practical enough to fit 4 passengers on long road trips. Going with a liftback hatch design much like the Panamera’s would actually attract the attention of some buyers looking at crossover like vehicles.

The feature that really appeals to me about vehicles like the Panamera and A7 sportback is how you still look super stunning pulling up to valet at your towns fanciest restaurant, but the next morning your able to throw a full-size mountain bike inside the trunk with the seats folded (remove the front wheel of course). Nice Sunday morning you can go cayon carving with the same car that just took you and your family to a fancy dinner one day and mountain biking the day after.

Call me crazy but I think Lexus really needs to indulge in this new emerging segment, if they want to stay relevant. They may not sell 45k copies a year to the chagrin of the ES, but even if they peak around 18k and settle at 10k towards then end of its lifecycle I think it would be a success. Making another 3 box sedan that looks like the LS or ES would be disastrous, I can’t imagine the product development team are that naive. Only time will tell us what Lexus has up their sleeve. We should know something officially from Lexus by Geneva or New York, Pebble Beach at the latest.

hirev,

I want the Lexus GS to survive—just don’t believe it will if it stays as is. It’s currently a middle child with less identity.

Completely agree with you, as the GS should be a high performance head turner—and I do like the Panamera or A7 as they perform; yet significantly different from stablemates.

GS needs a “wow factor” that differentiates and appropriate marketing to ensure it sells.

It it should not appeal to all folks.

Comically, I believe some believe that I want the GS to die. Rubbish. Calling out the issues. Happy 2019.

Jeff,

Agree. What I meant by kill the GS—is in its current incarnation.

An electric vehicle that whips Tesla (given Toyota’s resources), or a Panamera/A7 car—or both.

Happy 2019

Although the Tesla are trending and a new hot topic right now, I wouldn’t be so quick to call it a winner. Elon basically carved his company a niche market that didn’t exsist. They have snatched a few sales from other manufacturers. But overall the quality of the final product, craftsmanship and features are lacking compared to the mainstream brands from Germany and even Lexus.

Tesla has also been living on corporate welfare. Once the Audi, BMW, Mercedes get into the game I see Tesla merging or dying off completely. I’ve seen reports of cars being delivered with mix matched alloy wheels, mix match interior door panels and even General Motors quality paint jobs. I would hardly call them a winner they have no competition, who are they beating?

hirev,

Agree.

Tesla gets credit for pioneering a nice EV. Will never disparage them for that.

If Toyota transformed the GS into a performance EV—Panamera or A7 hatchback styled—it wouldn’t appeal to the masses, but would be that exciting middle child between the IS and LS.

So you're going to talk perf cars with us when you have a garage full of snorefest? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but to view such cars as exchangeable or equivalent with cars in the GS's class is kinda funny, although I am seeing a dumbing down, a myopic view of cars as appliances etc, by the general public (not saying you're one of those, either, btw) but it's really depressing from the POV of people who like cars, there's this constant onslaught of the bleeding edge now being represented with junk like Tesla's rolling car built around an x-box/television set geegaw syndrome, vs a bunch of people who want slugbucket SUV/CUVs that literally induce sleep the first time you take a hard corner and about 90% of which might as well release a dose of ambien into the passenger compartment every time you step on the gas and there's nothing there. My beater 2005 ES330 for all its mush and lack of big power is still more exciting to drive than most of this crap joe/jane consumer seems to be interested in, for some bizarre reason. Probably because their friends have one, etc.

I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. Maybe I should buy a Ford Escape base model and then just recline the seat and pass out by the time I get home from
work.... lmao.

Also we're talking Toyota here. Manufacturing capacity? If they need that they can make that happen. Look at what they did with the RX 350, demand was up so they started making noises about pumping them out in america to meet demand, and they did just that. They're not afraid to press buttons and make things happen if it benefits them. They're not backed into a corner on manufacturing capacity.

Problem with brand vanity is its a fickle beast. Companies like Range Rover could mount a vitrified dog turd as a hood ornament and like 20% of the loyalists would still buy it. Then every time Lexus tries to change the styling they end up doing a face-plant, because they're trying to make something that doesn't look like what everyone else is making, and good luck with that. Look at the crap Hyundai is going through with the Genesis, although its almost there, but still, theres an entire legion of people that won't buy them because of the brand. (it doesn't help them either, that, before the last 5-10 years, they have had a lot of absolute gutter trash junk in their product history, a problem Toyota/Lexus mostly doesn't have... ) but the idea is the same.

It always helps because one hand washes the other. If Lexus had better leasing programs that would alleviate a lot of it. There are a lot of people in this segment that enjoy setting cash on fire. Also a large contingent of lexus owners are a different sort of beast. Go on cargurus and you'll find a bunch of Lexus sedans of various generations with 120K+ on the clock with only one owner being listed. A lot of us buy these cars so we can run them a long time. Finding certain cars in some cases is actually difficult- because people hang onto them. In a way this is another challenge they created for themselves; Lexus has somewhat saturated its own market of buyers. Getting new buyers to the brand is a lot more challenging and a whole other ballgame.

Lol well you could say this about any sedan, but the whole reason most of us here are buying coupes and sedans is we don't want some clunky, slow, soulless crapmobile like everyone else is driving. Those vehicles have their place but sedan buyers largely aren't going to ditch a GS, BMW, MB, sedan/coupe, for a "truck". The GS never targeted those people to begin with, and it's the whole reason why Lexus has a whole other product line for the (mostly) "mediocritautomaton" crowd that wants an SUV like thing so they can "ride high off the road" blah blah (insert other lame excuses here).

Most of the people buying a GS (or for that matter any of the german competitors) care very little about resale value. Hell most of the low mileage people are leasing cars in this category, which is basically setting cash on fire.

Also you keep making it sound like there's some kind of mutual exclusion based on a limitation of resources going on here for Toyota. If they thought that producing less popular cars actually hurt their ability to sell more of everything else, they would have stopped making them a long time ago.

If you're talking about things like Ford dumping cars, that's not much of a shock. I'm honestly surprised that GM still makes any of them too, outside of the Corvette. Most of the mainstream american sedans and coupes are pretty much junk and don't have much allure left. There is literally nothing that 75% of american cars do at this point that can't be done better by an import mark. Chevy can't even make trashboxes anymore that people want to buy. Most of that market has moved to Toyota/Hyundai and others.

As far as SUV thingys, Lexus just added another one, IIRC, and I think they'll add more in the future as well or change the LX and GX, etc. That has little or nothing to do with whether the GS should exist or not.

The only time the GS/LS/ES etc would ever be a liability to Lexus/Toyota is if the cars started costing them more money to manufacture than they make... about the
only solid argument that could be made there is that with cars like the GS they have lost potential buyers to BMW/Audi/MB because of the lack of juice under the hood and potentially things like infotainment, etc, and potentially brand vanity issues as stated earlier. (and that's a complex thing to hack, frankly).

Toyota doesn't have much problem with revenue or to do R&D. Not to mention all the AFV/battery/eco **** crap right now is in a huge, turmoil driven state of transition, the transitory junk being peddled now by Tesla et al will likely be unrecognizable in 10 years from whatever tech emerges as being actually viable. The devil is in the details of course. Toyota invests in all that crap as well as stuff like the Mirai, etc, and they probably have a lot of other ***** in the air as well. The key is viability.